I’ve lived on a rural nation highway for a few years.
It’s unpaved and unmaintained by the county or the state, lined with timber, and extra often crossed by deer and jack rabbits than individuals.
It’s a throwback to an older, less complicated lifestyle.
It’s additionally a throwback to a scene I’ve at all times remembered from Mad Males, the place Don Draper and his household end their picnic after which nonchalantly throw all their trash into the grass beneath.
My expertise strolling and working and biking and driving on this highway has been to witness the return of that perspective. Folks dump tires and outdated mattresses. They dump particles from development websites. They dump beer bottles and sweet wrappers. They dump unlawful deer kills and for some inexplicable and alarming motive, quite a lot of lifeless canines.
At first, this simply pissed me off—particularly as a result of the nails stored giving me flats. It made me indignant at humanity and the place that I lived. I attempted calling the police and animal management and my native politicians—after all, they did nothing. I put up cameras which did nothing. I despaired concerning the local weather and the long run. I thought of transferring.
However then one morning on my stroll with my youngsters, a thought hit me that was each liberating and indicting. What number of occasions do I’ve to stroll previous this litter, I assumed, earlier than I’m complicit in its existence. Even when I moved to a spot the place this didn’t occur, I assumed, it might nonetheless be taking place right here. Marcus Aurelius was proper when he mentioned you could additionally commit injustice by doing nothing.
So I began cleansing it up. The tires went into the again of my truck—and I paid to have them correctly recycled. I used to be down within the gullies by the facet of the highway selecting up soda bottles and plastic baggage. I tossed numerous nails and screws into the trash. I’ve placed on face masks and gloves and scooped up lifeless goats, a lifeless calf and lifeless canines which I burned or took to the again of my ranch to decompose in a much less disruptive place.
I can’t say the expertise was pleasurable, but it surely was empowering.
The Stoics would agree that the world will be ugly and terrible and disappointing. They might simply remind us that what we management is what we do about this. We management what distinction we attempt to make. We management whether or not it makes us bitter or makes us higher—whether or not we complain or simply get to work.
However the final reward got here extra just lately, as a result of we spent the previous couple of weeks on the seaside as a household. My youngsters have been excited to play within the ocean and to construct sand castles and have ice cream, after all. But they appeared to have probably the most enjoyable working up and down the empty seaside within the morning—unprompted by me—selecting up trash left by the seaside goers the day earlier than and asking for my assist lifting them up so they may put it in these paper bag trash cans that the county places up each few hundred yards.
I posted about it on Instagram as soon as and other people confirmed me there was a complete hashtag of individuals doing this. It began with a viral Fb publish in 2019, which has 335,000 shares and 102,000 likes (and counting). A man posted earlier than and after pictures with this caption:
“Here’s a new #problem for all you bored teenagers. Take a photograph of an space that wants some cleansing or upkeep, then take a photograph after you’ve got accomplished one thing about it, and publish it.”
The problem unfold globally due to the #TrashTag hashtag. You possibly can see individuals cleansing up a seaside in Mumbai, filling up dumpsters stuffed with trash in Kansas Metropolis, and accumulating rubbish in Vietnam.
A Each day Stoic reader emailed me a short while again to inform me about how his selecting up trash unfold regionally. In his townhome group, there’s a trash dumping drawback. “It was driving me mad,” he wrote. He put up cameras to attempt to catch offenders. He stayed up late to see if he may run them off. Then he got here throughout the video I made and as an alternative of policing his space, he started cleansing it up. “I noticed it rub off on a few of my neighbors and household,” he mentioned. And now, the variety of neighbors selecting up trash outnumbers the variety of neighbors dumping trash.
The Stoics spoke of our “circles of concern.” Our first concern, they mentioned, is our thoughts. However past that is our concern for our our bodies then for our speedy household then our prolonged household. Like concentric rings, these circles have been adopted by our concern for our group, our metropolis, our nation, our empire, our world.
The work of philosophy, the Stoics mentioned, was to attract this outer concern inward, to learn to care as a lot as attainable for as many individuals as attainable, to do as a lot good for them as attainable.
There’s an indication by the observe I run at in Austin, put there by the soccer participant Hollywood Henderson (who paid for the observe). It says, “Depart This Place Higher Than You Discovered It.”
To me, that’s a reasonably good life philosophy. In issues large and small (however largely small). As Zeno mentioned, “well-being is realized by small steps, however is actually no small factor.” You don’t have to avoid wasting the planet. You don’t have to avoid wasting somebody’s life. Are you able to simply make issues a bit bit higher?
There’s a Mr. Rogers quote I like. “After I was a boy and I’d see scary issues within the information,” Rogers mentioned, “my mom would say to me, ‘Search for the helpers. You’ll at all times discover people who find themselves serving to.’”
We determine what we search for in life—will we get mad on the individuals making the mess or do we glance in the direction of the individuals cleansing issues up? We determine whether or not to despair or discover hope and goodness.
However I really assume we are able to go additional. Will we determine to be one of many helpers? Will we determine to select up the trash? Will we determine to depart this place a bit higher than we discovered it?
That’s what makes the distinction…and life higher for everybody, however particularly you.
